Broadband Internet subscribers have a certain expectation of the quality of their experience using the Internet, whether the subscribers are merely surfing web pages or streaming video. Over-the-top (OTT) video, video that uses broadband but does not require any affiliation to the broadband network, is becoming the dominant user of Internet bandwidth in mature markets, having the largest median usage per subscriber of any application type in the Internet. As the demand for Internet video is increasing there are often issues with the network capability and capacity to deliver the video at a quality level that is acceptable to the subscribers. As such, subscribers are complaining about a lower level of quality of experience.
It has been shown that many subscribers switch Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as they become frustrated by the service and the inability of the ISP to effectively deal with QoE. As ISPs are continuously looking for ways to stay competitive, QoE is becoming a more important measurement aspect to ISP businesses.
As QoE is traditionally considered a subjective measure, it is difficult to properly quantify. Relying on subscribers' opinions and scoring may not be an achievable solution as it may be unavailable and insufficient. Besides, an ISP cannot wait for subscribers' input to fix a problem in the ESP's network, because for each subscriber who complains many more experience the problem and may simply switch providers.
Conventional approaches to QoE, particularly for wireless communication networks tend to address protocols such as Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) and Voice Over IP (VoIP). However, a large amount of video on the Internet is delivered as “progressive” or “adaptive” media. Further, conventional systems and methods focus on the same statistics used for QoS calculations such as “jitter time” for RTSP and Mean Opinion Score (MOS) for VoIP.
Therefore, there is a need for systems and methods with improved capability of measuring and improving the quality of experience for end-users of progressive and adaptive media streaming in a network environment.